Painted Wooden Letters

Christmas is almost here!  Between attending parties, shopping for family members, making my own wish list and, of course, working, I found a little time to be creative!

I've been planning this project for a while.  I planned to have completed it when I decorated for Christmas (but I hadn't even ordered the wooden letters).  Several months ago, I stumbled upon this site on Pinterest.  It offers completely customizable wooden letters.  You're able to choose the font, height and thickness of the letters that you choose (price depending on height and thickness).



This is what the letters looked like when I received them (above).  It's tough to see in the photos, but the letters have a dark brown edge.  This is due to the thickness of the letters that I ordered.  The thinner letters are cut with a laser (which leaves the dark edge) while the thicker letters are cut with a computer controlled router (all of this information can be found on the website).

To paint the letters, I first painted a thin line of brown around the edge of each letter (this is much more obvious on "Joy" than "Noel" because of the size of the letters).  Then, I painted the entire letter with red or green (not the base red or green - I mixed paints to get the colors that I wanted).  On top of the red and green, I added bronze paint (not all over, just in a few key spots).

I glued the "Noel" letters together using E600 glue, but not the "Joy" letters (because they didn't fit well together).  I learned about E600 glue through a Michael's tutorial.  It's pretty good stuff.  If you haven't tried it, you should!

I hope you found this post inspiring and/or helpful!